Consciousness Techniques
How can one proceed practically to promote a client’s consciousness? A prerequisite for this is that the client has a trusting relationship to the counsellor (see dialogic method). The effort that the client must provide is to take the consultant more seriously than himself. Every feedback, every hypothesis and every meaning, every suggestion for interpretation about the meaning of non-verbal, unconscious utterances, every reference to unconscious relationship-shaping motives, every feedback to that which the client triggers in the counsellor, all these possibilities are only effective if the client opens himself to the possibilities of unconscious expression in himself, which is illustrated by this, and sees within it a chance for personality development (“Maybe there is something in it?”). If, as a client, one reckons with the possibility that one can explore one’s own inner, unknown continent by means of one’s own unintended signals and the reaction of the environment to them, a decisive step is taken towards changing the psyche. The status quo can only be maintained if a person does not absorb any new and different information about himself. The ability of the counsellor to be able to have (or maintain) the trust of the clients, even when he questions those aspects of the clients, which they identify with in a particular way is, for this reason, of particular significance (“This is how I am, and I have always been like this!”).